Strange Sally Diamond

I began to realize that our lives were far from normal, mine and Dad’s, as well as the two in the room next door. I could hear them all the time, moving around. I could hear my dad visiting at night. The sound was always muffled and I could never make out the words. The ghost often shrieked and the child often cried. I read hundreds of books and nobody in them lived like we did, or like my mother and sister. I asked Dad about this. Why couldn’t I sleep in one of the bedrooms upstairs? Why did I have to sleep in the room in the annexe next door to her? Why did he not have any friends? Why didn’t we have a telephone? He said he had lots of friends that he saw every day at work. I asked him about his work as a dentist, what exactly he did, and he explained about fillings and dentures. My teeth were in excellent condition because I was diligent about brushing first thing in the morning, after dinner and before bed. I asked him did he not want to go to the pub with his friends after work. He replied that he didn’t drink alcohol, and that he would rather not leave me on my own in the house for any longer than he had to. I wondered why there were no other mad and dangerous women locked away and he gave me a book called Jane Eyre to read. ‘It’s written by a woman, but you’ll see what I mean.’

Indeed, Bertha Mason was terrifying, but Jane was nice. I had never read books about women. Denise Norton hadn’t tried to hurt me, I said, and then Dad said, ‘I didn’t want to ever have to explain, but …’ He pulled up his sweater and there was a scar all the way across his stomach. ‘She stabbed me.’ He reminded me of the bruises and black eyes he would sometimes have in the mornings. He had told me they were a result of his clumsiness, but now he admitted it was her who had inflicted his wounds. He pulled down the collar of his shirt and showed me the latest, a bite mark on his shoulder. He was like poor Mr Rochester in the book. I was shocked, and surer than ever that I never wanted to see my mother again.

Later, he gave me Medea to read and Macbeth. ‘You see what she made him do? He was a weak man. That’s why a man has to be in charge. We have to show our superiority.’

I asked Dad why he didn’t have my mother arrested. She could go to jail or a mental hospital. He stared at me for a long time and then said, ‘I couldn’t put my own wife in jail. It would be too cruel. You have no idea what goes on in places like that.’ If Denise was of no use, why didn’t Dad let her go? ‘A man has needs,’ was all he said in response to that.

‘Dad, she said she’s been here since she was eleven. Is that true? Did you marry her when she was eleven?’

He tossed his head back and laughed. ‘She is so stupid, she doesn’t know what age she is.’

‘What age is she? Her teeth have fallen out, so I guess she must be old.’

‘Exactly.’ He grinned at me.

I was beginning to discover for myself what a man’s needs might be. I had a certain reaction when I saw beautiful girls on TV and I knew it had something to do with my penis, because when I thought about those girls on my own in bed, I couldn’t help playing with myself, resulting in what one of the encyclopaedias called ‘ejaculation’. I even did it in my sleep. I was afraid of asking Dad about this. I wasn’t sure what his reaction might be. He had mentioned in passing a few months previously that masturbation was against the laws of God. I hadn’t known what the word meant then, but I certainly knew now.

I kept my new discovery to myself, but in Dad’s library I discovered books on human anatomy with drawings of naked men and women, arrows pointing to their various body parts. I was going through puberty. The only naked woman I had ever seen was my stupid mother. Vulva and vagina were the words that stayed in my mind. I learned how babies were made. Dad put his penis into her vagina and vulva and pushed his seed into her. Why would he do that when he hated her and she disgusted him so much? He must have done it twice. ‘A man has needs,’ he’d said. Now I understood.

That was not the only thing that changed that year. Everything did. One spring afternoon, I was at my desk in the sitting room studying some Greek texts when, from my window, I saw a man climb through the undergrowth below the high wall on the left-hand side of the garden. I was startled. I had never seen anyone enter our grounds before without it being prearranged. Occasionally, the oilmen would make deliveries to the tank at the end of the garden, and Dad would advise me to stay in my room. On those days he said he’d had to gag Denise Norton and the child, so that they could make no noise. He said it was an embarrassment to have a mad wife and a stupid child. They were ‘our secret’. That was strange. Who could I ever tell?

The long-haired man, wearing denim jeans and a black jacket, slid along the tall trees at the edge of our property, and then made a dart towards the back of the house, crouching low to the ground as he ran across. A burglar!